the most fun so far

"Our house is full of set - its a bit overwhelming." It's true. When you live in the back of a truck and you use it for transporting things, the things end up on your couch, on your kitchen floor, on the pathway to your bed. We unload the table and the bunkbed peices and the bits of acromat and the long roll of chequered lino. We talk about a trailor.
It looks like a lot of stuff to be touring round the country and lumping in and out of theatres. I'm daunted.

We stack everything in the elevator and then set it up on the stage. Amazingly it seems to only take about ten minutes. The set is bulky, but not heavy and awkward. Every piece is easy to carry. "It will be a quicker bump in than Bubblewrap" we say. Every piece of set/equipment we have needs to be considered in terms of touring.

We spend a long time looking at the layout of each item. the mats, the lino, where the astro turf will go. The aesthetic versus the practicality of where we want mats. the additional barrier of not wanting to cut foot holes for the table and bunks in the mats means we are limited to very particular angles. The relationship between the table and the bunkbed needs to be pretty specific. If we are putting the mats under the lino and the astroturf we really need to have very clear visuals about where the mats are and where they aren't.

Finally we come to a conclusion. For today. Lets play on it.
So we warm up and start with forward rolls in and dive rolls out of. We jump on the table and up onto the top bunk, we do table-slides onto the bottom bunk and forward rolls out. Then we start on the list we made on friday. We try each trick once or twice and most of them get a tick. Yes this one will be possible. So will this. Only a couple feel like they will require a lot of work. Our skills translate easily onto the equipment. By 2:30 we want coffee and treats but we have worked through the whole list of tricks.

Suddenly the set feels more vital to our training routine. We want to start putting together routines, we want to get used to working on this equipment. It's going to limit everything we do while offering us a million options for new things.

We look at the rehearsal schedule of venues with this in mind and make some phone calls, book Kingston for some more sessions, think about a proposal to Westside.

Then we meet with Amanda. She comes in and sits on the floor of the theatre and watches some of our impro footage on Luke's laptop. The Kingston people are locking up so we walk the cold streets of Moorabbin together trying to find an after-five cafe. The only thing open is subway so we sit there drinking orange juices from the subway fridge and brainstorming costumes. She says "You're magic, I think you're magic, you're going to just discover your dog ears and its going to be amazing" she says, "a quick change is easy you'll just need one other person..." and she explains the velcro. She talks about kneepads and her own childhood dressup box and an old black and white photo of a girl in a pretty white dress with flippers and a snorkel mask.

We talk about a black and white palate in the sense of a newspaper. With all the grainy greys and off whites - chromatic - and additional splashes of magical colour. I like that this is similar to Bubblewrap in a way - the very limited palate. It get's dark outside and we make dates. Plan to talk soon.

We drive back through the dark streets in Nona with me typing a proposal to Westside on the laptop and Christy alternately encouraging Luke's driving and looking over my shoulder to help me with sentences (but only at the traffic lights because otherwise she gets carsick)